No desire for sex in a relationship: what may be behind it

Having no desire for sex happens at some point in almost every long relationship. It says nothing about whether something is wrong with you or with your relationship. Usually the lack of desire is a signal, and it is worth listening to what it is saying.

When low desire becomes an issue

Desire fluctuates. It depends on sleep, work, children, the time of year, the mood between two people. There is no fixed number below which sex counts as “too little”. How often other couples have sex is not much help to you.

Low desire becomes an issue when someone suffers from it. That can be the person who has no desire and feels guilty. Or the person who feels rejected. Often it is both, each in their own way. Many suffer less from the missing desire itself than from a guilty conscience because their partner is disappointed.

What may be behind the lack of desire

There is rarely just one reason. Body, everyday life, the relationship and the way you have sex all interlock. I assume the body chooses not to want sex for a good reason. The question is what that reason is for you.

Stress and a body on alert

Sex needs a state in which you are relaxed enough to feel your body. If you function all day, answer emails in the evening and sleep badly at night, there is little left for it. Your body is then set to coping. Arousal hardly has room there.

Habit and sex out of duty

Sometimes it isn’t a lack of desire for sex in general, but for this kind of sex. It has gone the same way for years, at the same pace, with the same ending. Or it happens “to keep the peace”. If you keep having sex you don’t really want, you learn to avoid it. That makes sense.

Conflict and hurt

Anger that isn’t spoken often ends up in bed. A hurt that was never talked about. The feeling of being left alone with everyday life. A no to sex can then mean: not while this is standing between us. It is rarely a no to the relationship.

Physical reasons and medication

Hormones, illness and medication can also dampen desire, some antidepressants or hormonal contraception for example. I come back to this further down. What comes on top for women and for men, I describe in separate articles: low libido in women and low desire as a man.

Stages of life

After a birth, the body changes, and so do sleep and the relationship. I write about this in sex after birth. An unfulfilled wish for a child can turn sex into a task. Menopause, illness or a death shift where your energy goes. At times like these, desire often steps back. That is not a failure.

Spontaneous and responsive desire

Many people believe desire has to come out of nowhere: a thought, a tingle, and then you want it. This spontaneous desire exists. It is common at the start of a relationship, when everything is new.

There is also responsive desire. It only arises once closeness and touch have already begun. The Canadian sexual medicine specialist Rosemary Basson described this model. People who work this way often have no urge for sex beforehand. But as soon as there is touch and it feels good, desire follows.

For many, that is a relief. If you never “just feel like it”, that doesn’t mean something is missing in you. It may mean your desire needs a different way in. It gets difficult when every touch is read as an invitation to sex. Then the very way in that responsive desire needs is lost.

When one person wants more than the other

In almost every long relationship, two people don’t want sex equally often. That alone is not a problem. What gets difficult is the pattern that can grow out of it: one person asks, courts, pushes. The other evades and withdraws. The more one wants, the less the other wants. Both are trying to solve the problem, and that is exactly what keeps it going.

Some couples consider opening the relationship at this point. For some that can be a fitting path, for others not. It changes little about the fact that the pattern between the two of you stays as long as you don’t look at it. You can read more about this dynamic under mismatched desire.

From the side of the person with less desire

You feel pressure, even when nobody says anything. You feel guilty. Perhaps you avoid every bit of tenderness because it might lead to more. You go to bed later, you are busy, you have a headache. Some say yes when they mean no, out of fear of losing the other person. A yes like that overrides your own limits, and desire usually withdraws even further afterwards.

From the side of the person with more desire

You feel rejected, and at some point no longer desired. You wonder whether it’s you, your body, the way you are. Some accuse the other person of being cold. Others stop asking and withdraw too. Then there is peace, but a sad one.

In patterns like these, the person who wants less usually decides whether sex happens. That doesn’t feel good for either of you. And it shows that this is about more than frequency: about fear of rejection, about self-worth, about how free someone feels in this relationship.

What the body has to do with it

Desire is not only a matter of the mind. It also depends on how someone builds arousal in the body. Sexocorporel, a body-oriented approach from clinical sexology, looks at breathing, movement and muscle tension for this.

Many people hold their breath during sex without noticing. They tighten their belly and pelvis or stay almost motionless. That way, arousal can hardly be felt, and what you don’t feel doesn’t make you want more. How a person breathes and moves is learned. That is why it can also be tried differently.

What you can try yourself

A few steps that don’t involve any performance goal. Not all of them suit every couple.

Starting a conversation

Talk about sex, but not in bed and not straight after a rejection. A walk often works better than the sofa. Speak about yourself: “I miss you” instead of “You never want to anyway”. Or: “I notice that I’m avoiding it, and I don’t really know why myself.” The first conversation doesn’t have to solve anything. It is enough that both of you can say how you are.

A question I often ask in my work with couples: Why do you actually have sex? For closeness, for reassurance, to make up, out of devotion? Behind each of these reasons there can also be a reason for low desire. If you mainly have sex to make up, you may lose desire when conflicts never get fully resolved.

Touch without a goal

Set aside times for touch in which sex is explicitly not part of the plan. That sounds unromantic. For many, it removes exactly the pressure that had weighed on every bit of tenderness. The sex researchers Masters and Johnson described exercises like this under the name sensate focus. You will find instructions in touch without a goal.

Getting to know your own desire

Desire doesn’t only belong in the relationship. What do you like when you are on your own? Which fantasies come up? When did you last feel at ease in your body? If you know your own desire, it is easier to bring it in as a couple.

When low desire is not a problem

Some people feel little or no sexual attraction to others and don’t suffer from it. The term for this is asexuality. It is an orientation, not a lack. It can get difficult when two people in a relationship are very different in this respect.

When medical advice and when support can make sense

If your desire has changed suddenly, you are taking new medication or sex hurts, please have it checked by a doctor. The same applies to hormonal changes, for example after a birth or during menopause. Sex therapy can run alongside it.

Support can make sense when conversations about sex always end the same way, in an argument or in silence. Or when you can’t work out on your own what your lack of desire stands for. In sex therapy I don’t try to get rid of the lack of desire. Together we look at what it protects. When was desire there, and what was different then? What would you need for desire to have room? Alongside talking, I include the body, with breathing, movement and small awareness exercises. Clothes stay on. If you come as a couple, we also look at the dynamic between you, as in couples therapy.

You can come on your own or together. As a rule, you pay the fees yourself.

How you can begin

I work in Neukölln on Karl-Marx-Straße, in Prenzlauer Berg on Am Friedrichshain and online, in German and English. Write me a few lines if you like. You can read more about how I work with this under sex therapy for low desire.